Continuing our ongoing coverage of Lights Out, produced by Saw, The Conjuring and Insidious director James Wan, we spoke with director David F. Sandberg about creating suspense and terror in the haunter, while avoiding fake scares.

We’ve already seen the film and loved it, and have also heard that prior to the Los Angeles Film Festival premiere it had been testing through the roof for Warner Bros./New Line Cinema. Sandberg talked a bit about the response, while explaining how he avoided the typical horror cliche’s that destroy a scary movie.

“Apparently [it’s] pretty damn scary! I love seeing it with an audience because they get so into the film,” Sandberg told Bloody in an exclusive interview. “Not only do they get scared but they laugh and they cheer when the characters don’t do typical stupid horror movie stuff and get themselves killed. I love when you can surprise an audience because then you know you’re at least not boring them which I think is the biggest sin in storytelling.”

He also walked us through how he creates an on-screen scare – his approach and using sound (or lack thereof) as a device.

“I try to strive more for suspense and terror since when you do a scare, especially a jump scare, it’s a release for the audience,” he explained. “They jump and then they laugh about jumping and the suspense is gone. I think that’s part of what made people like the short. We start out with a jump scare to let people know that things can jump out at any moment but then there’s not another scare until the end. I wanted to keep the suspense up for as long as possible. In fact once you see that face at the end of the short I didn’t have a loud sting or anything because you don’t need to go big when the audience have been on pins and needles up until then.

He continued: “What I hate are fake jump scares. You know, when it’s only a cat jumping out or a friend putting a hand on the shoulder or something. There is one particular jump scare in Lights Out that I’m not very proud of. But not because it’s fake, just that it’s a bit lazy. We had another thing planned but because of time and technical issues we had to come up with something on the spot. People always jump when it happens and it seems appreciated but I like to have a little bit of finesse to it.

“I think sound is probably the most important part in a horror movie. Especially lack of sound and score. In many films the score or the sound will signal when things are going to happen. The score is really loud and then just before a scare it will go quiet and you know that here it comes. For scary sequences I like to just have a faint low frequency rumble on the soundtrack or very minimal score.”

In our previous story, Sandberg told us about the film’s antagonist, an imaginary friend. Now, he explains how he expanded on the short with the gimmick of lights going on and off.

“That’s all we had to keep from the short really. The concept of an antagonist that doesn’t exist in light. It was really important for me that we stuck to the rule that she does not exist in light. If she’s for example holding something in her hand and the light comes on, that thing will fall to the ground. In the short we didn’t care too much about any rules because it was just a fun little thing. In the last shot of the short she’s clearly in the light turning off the light switch.

“Sticking to the rules made the film a bitch to light though. How do you light a character that doesn’t exist in light? The answer was to only light the background so that she’s a silhouette. We had to constantly find excuses for light hitting walls behind her though. It would have been easier to cheat and use a rim light on her just to separate her from the background but I didn’t want to cheat.

There is a shot in the trailer with her arm visible but there’s an explanation for that in the film.”

Lights Out opens in theaters everywhere on July 22. Warm Bodies actress Teresa Palmer, Alexander DiPersia and Gabriel Bateman topline Lights Out, from a screenplay by Eric A. Heisserer’s (The Thing, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Final Destination 5), which was based on Sandberg’s 2013 short film that went viral.

In the film, “When Rebecca (Palmer ) left home, she thought she left her childhood fears behind. Growing up, she was never really sure of what was and wasn’t real when the lights went out…and now her little brother, Martin, is experiencing the same unexplained and terrifying events that had once tested her sanity and threatened her safety. A frightening entity with a mysterious attachment to their mother, Sophie, has reemerged. But this time, as Rebecca gets closer to unlocking the truth, there is no denying that all their lives are in danger…once the lights go out.”

Here’s the newest trailer that dropped late last week.

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